Ben Pimlott

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Ben Pimlott

Pimlott in 1984
Born
Benjamin John Pimlott

(1945-07-04)4 July 1945
Merton, England
Died10 April 2004(2004-04-10) (aged 58)
London, England
Citizenship
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
EducationRokeby School
Marlborough College
Alma materWorcester College, Oxford
Newcastle University
OccupationHistorian
Spouse
(m. 1977)
[1]
Children3[1]

Benjamin John Pimlott FBA (4 July 1945 – 10 April 2004) was an historian of the post-war period in Britain. He made a substantial contribution to the literary genre of political biography.

Background

Ben Pimlott was born in

Philosophy, Politics and Economics and a BPhil in politics, having originally won a scholarship to study there.[1][2] In 1970, despite a pronounced stammer, he was appointed as a lecturer in the politics department of the University of Newcastle, where he also took his PhD.[3]

In the

Cleveland and Whitby the following October. Having lost on both occasions, he also contested the 1979 election, after which he left the North East to take up a research post at the London School of Economics, moving to a lectureship at Birkbeck College, London in 1981.[4]

Writing

During 1987–88, he was political editor of the New Statesman magazine and took on the post of Professor of Contemporary History at Birkbeck in 1988. For the following two years, Pimlott was responsible, with friends, for the short-lived journal Samizdat.[4]

Aside from his attempts at a Parliamentary career in the 1970s, not to mention his tenure as Chairman of the

Whitbread Prize.[6]

His other books include Labour and the Left in the 1930s (1977),[6] The Trade Unions in British Politics (with Chris Cook, 1982), Fabian Essays in Socialist Thought (1984), The Alternative (with Tony Wright and Tony Flower, 1990), Frustrate their Knavish Tricks (1994) and Governing London (with Nirmala Rao, 2002).[2]

Views and legacy

Many of Pimlott's theses have stood the test of time,[

British politics, and believed that no such consensus actually existed.[2]

In 1996 his works were recognised with a fellowship of the British Academy. In 1998, he became Warden of Goldsmiths, University of London.[6]

Personal life, death and legacy

In 1977, Pimlott married Jean Seaton,[2] a lecturer on communications and the media at the University of Westminster. They had three children.[2]

Pimlott died from complications of an

acute myeloid leukaemia at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery on 10 April 2004, at the age of 58.[2] In 2005, Goldsmiths named a major new Will Alsop-designed building on its New Cross site in his honour, and the Fabian Society and The Guardian inaugurated the first annual Ben Pimlott Prize for Political Writing.[7]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Ben Pimlott". The Telegraph. 13 April 2004. Retrieved 28 September 2020.
  2. ^ required.)
  3. The British Academy
    : 161–179. 2007.
  4. ^ a b Kenneth O. Morgan Obituary: Ben Pimlott, The Guardian, 12 April 2004
  5. ^ "Obituary: Ben Pimlott". Liverpool Daily Post. 14 April 2004. Retrieved 21 December 2021 – via The Free Library.
  6. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 16 December 2022.
  7. ^ White, Michael (15 January 2005). "Pimlott prize unveiled". The Guardian.

Sources

Party political offices
Preceded by Chair of the Fabian Society
1993 – 1994
Succeeded by
Alf Dubs